


who killed the hokage

by crowind



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 13:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4524102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowind/pseuds/crowind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every Hokage must some day die. Sasuke and Sakura attend two funerals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who killed the hokage

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for the ssmonth prompt "mortality", but was never meant to be shippy, alas.

Orochimaru hadn't killed the Sandaime. Like the formless dream of last night, the thought persisted on the front of Sasuke's mind regardless of its significance; no, precisely because the mystery intrigued him. It grew throughout what remained of the procession, as though greedily gulping everything that flitted through his awareness: the smokeless flame on the altar before the pristine white casket, the fat drops of rain rolling off both; the long, long line of people still yet queuing behind him, the long, long line of people who had gone before him; the silent, restrained sobs that nevertheless deafened his ears. 

It stayed even as the group before Team Seven peeled away and it was their turn to give one last show of respect. Was the Sandaime's body even in the casket? Sasuke idly wondered as he bowed. Sakura was fluid, ever graceful; Team Seven's dignity began and ended with her. Naruto folded as though he'd lost the entire length of his spine. Sakura had to curl her fingers around Naruto's wrist and herd him away. Five seconds in and out; by nightfall everyone in the village must have finished bowing and scraping. Sasuke couldn't help comparing it to the turnover at the Uchiha's funeral – one afternoon's affair for all of them. The seal on his shoulder twisted and bit. 

Sasuke was still thinking, now impatiently, even as Naruto and Sakura debated looking for Kakashi or going for ramen straight away. Sakura didn't want to do anything until she could go home and get changed. Somehow he drifted after them as they wandered, aimless, to their usual bridge, then past a training ground, then the shopping district, around and around, noisy as usual. 

("But it's still raining so we're going to be wet anyway–" 

"Not the problem, Naruto!") 

Sakura was saying, "You know, it's… he's the only Hokage I've ever known, you know? Same for my parents. My father said three entire generations grew up under Sandaime-sama, it's like waking up and seeing that the sky is actually purple." 

She bit the inside of her cheek. Like every other shinobi, Sakura talked without talking about: the funeral, the Hokage dead, the invasion, Konoha a few unfortunate encounters away from destruction. 

Naruto punched his palm, squelch, making Sakura wince and give him the evil eye. "Yanno, if I'm the Hokage, I'd order a hunt on Orochimaru this instant!" 

That was it. Sasuke said without thinking, "Orochimaru didn't kill the Sandaime." 

"Eh, what's that?" Naruto blinked owlishly. 

Sasuke spoke slowly for Naruto's benefit. "Orochimaru didn't kill the Sandaime. The Hokage had been dead even before that. He's – was old. It made him weak – he _was_ weak. That's why he died." 

Naruto actually growled. He had to be restrained by Sakura, almost as an afterthought with her attention mostly on Sasuke. "Sasuke-kun! What makes you say that?" 

It was, he reflected, a good question. There was no way Sakura and especially Naruto would have ever understood anything if it wasn't couched in more sentimentality than necessary. So he shrugged and split. The thought crystallised with distance, and by the time he unlocked the door to his apartment, it was truth. The Hokage was old, he would have died of age anyway. Orochimaru only… what? gave him an honorable death, the blazing glory of protecting his precious people with his life. 

And wasn't he the paragon of the Will of Fire, Sasuke thought snidely. Look where it got him, got all of them, a village in shambles and waiting for a breeze to knock it apart. And in the end it was his own student who did him in, which Sasuke decided was apt. Vaguely, he recalled the Hokage, or someone else, maybe Iruka. The new generation must surpass the past. The Hokage was old, had been old for a long time. He had been the Hokage while Sasuke's clan was killed, right under his nose. Was Itachi stronger? He must have been, Itachi hadn't even bothered challenging the Hokage. 

The strongest shinobi in the village, Sasuke thought sardonically. Then he found a dead dove on his door, and once the train of thought was lost, Sasuke had never recovered it. 

— 

The wake ran for three whole days as what seemed to be the entire village came to pay their respect, and on the last day a delegate from Iwa as well, Sasuke thought in return for Kakashi's attending the ancient fence-sitter's funeral. The cremation was a much quieter event: Shizune, the Uchiha family, and Naruto; the funerary urn went to Shizune with tears in lieu of familial dispute, and similarly went what little asset was left to Tsunade's name. With Naruto gently leading a gobsmacked Sarada to discuss the details of her inheritance, finally they were alone, Sasuke and Sakura, and the still warm furnace. The funeral parlor's manager hovered just out of sight, perhaps forgetting his customers were shinobi. 

"Let's go," Sasuke murmured, curling his fingers around her wrist, and Sakura followed. Later, he'd find her scrubbing an already pristine dish, or spending forever on the first page of the budget report she'd brought home. Even later, she was wide awake at the hour of the ox, too early to do anything productive, too late to get a decent sleep. It was a sight. Their curtain hung a few milimetres apart, allowing a sliver of silver light to fall on the strands of hair trailing on the pillow. Minutes, even hours were spent staring at the otherworldy hues that resulted, dawn and moonlight woven together, and remarking to himself that, why yes, nothing else in this world or the others was like it. Years of waking and waiting for her to fall asleep left him only the aches of his stump, keenest in the dead of the night, and a fervent wish she would fall back asleep soon. 

It was their third funeral, though it ought to be the last for a while, with Kakashi's half a century away if they were lucky. Three, and now both Sasuke and Sakura were well and truly nobody's children anymore (Kakashi was the benevolent older cousin, if Sasuke had to think of him in familial terms). Practice makes perfect; three time's the charm. Maybe a talk was in order. 

But just as he turned, resolved to find a better time, she spoke. "I've been thinking… it's odd, really, because it's something you said a long time ago, when we were children. You've forgotten about it, I'd bet." 

"I have," Sasuke agreed. "I don't even know what you're talking about." 

He propped himself on his elbow, staring quizzically at her smiling at her own absent-mindedness and told him. Apparently, Sasuke'd once tried to blame the Sandaime's death on his own old age. 

"I don't remember that," he said honestly. He must have said worse, to have Sakura memorise his words for the rest of her life. His wife had an extraordinary memory, yes, but more than that, young Sasuke was – there was no other way around it – an extraordinary brat. 

She turned, peering up at him. "I didn't think you meant to absolve Orochimaru of murder and treachery, even then, but I can't say I didn't see the logic there, either. So I've been thinking." 

"When do you not," Sasuke said, not without affection as he said goodbye to sleep and settled on his back. 

"Harhar, Sasuke-kun. You know, she wouldn't have let an opportunity for sarcasm pass her by, either. Well, that's not the only reason I've always thought you were alike, you and Tsunade-shishou." 

She bit her lip, pensive, as though fearing that voicing her doubts would make them real. "I… still don't know how she died. Cardiac arrest is the cleanest explanation, and considering that she _was_ old by shinobi standards, definitely older than the Sandaime when he died, it'd have made sense." 

"Foul play, then?" Sasuke said as calmly as he could. It had been, as Sakura had said, a clean death, very peaceful, something that passed in the night unnoticed. With shinobi, the most suspicious death one could have. 

But Sakura shook her head. "No, I don't think so. Or… not from the outside. I said she was old for shinobi, right, but civilians tend to live longer, and we treat a lot of them. I… don't think we should have, in some cases. We're good enough to prolong their suffering. The corps even receives mission requests along this line all the time. I don't even know why!" 

Sasuke knew she knew perfectly well why: it was only with the newest generation, the one after Sarada, that would grow without the immediate association of shinobi as assassins. Since medic-nin were shinobi at heart, their special missions only followed. Sasuke hn'd sympathetically. 

Sakura sighed. "So I've been thinking, what if – she's vain, Sasuke-kun, and proud, and she grew up in another time, in a prestigious clan; she was even a legend in her own right. Oh, Sasuke-kun, there hasn't been a war for so long that I've forgotten, but what if she hadn't?" 

"She was vain, as you say. Too vain to leave the ugliest corpse a Hokage could leave behind." Sasuke thought the honour would have gone to Naruto, but Sakura didn't seem to be in the mood for a joke. She didn't argue either, thought she hadn't see his point yet. "You know Tsunade; if you were right, she'd have disappeared and no one would ever know, but she didn't." 

She snuggled into him, her eyebrows furrowing ticklishly on his chest. "And that other thing, Tsunade might not have minded. She fought for this, too. A future for the children, and peace for shinobi to grow old, even die in sleep. Tsunade…" He'd sank as deep as speculating a dead woman's motives, why not go the full hog. "She's the first Hokage to not die in office, nor in battle. She'd have been proud of that, the vain woman." 

It was late and he was tired, and so was she. Sasuke had tried to share his wife's burden if not exactly her grief; right then his half-formed thoughts would have helped no one. Anyway she seemed appeased, if not exactly convinced. He might still tell her some day. That there was strength in recognising one's limits and stepping down when a successor was ready – even creating said successor, and watching as her star brightened while one's own dulled to become a footnote in her story, and until the end still made herself a pillar to lean on. It was, he mused, not a terrible way to die. 


End file.
